Discusses the life and decades-long literary oblivion of Zora Neale Hurston, a leading black novelist who opposed the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Included is an examination of her writings in juxtaposition to racial attitudes of the day and black stereotyping. (GR)

By examining the works of classic American authors, this book presents the idea that individual human beings can break free of the structures of thought into which they are born and that, by reimagining the world, can change it. In chapters on Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, Edith Wharton, Richard Wright, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham…